Recently, I wrote a piece for the Women’s Budget Group and the Good Growth Foundation. You can find a summary of what I wrote below:
Women’s working lives have changed dramatically, but our transport system hasn’t kept pace. If we want better jobs, higher incomes and greater economic participation for women, we need to build a network around the realities of how women actually live.
A system built for a different economy
For decades, the picture behind our transport planning was a man leaving home at seven in the morning, driving to a nearby office or factory, and returning the same way in the evening. Roads were engineered and expanded, alongside suburban housing and industrial estates, to carry ever more cars on that journey.
Today’s economic and social picture looks very different. Women have made advances in almost every sector, but our systems are still designed around that traditional male commuting pattern. Women’s lives and working patterns tend to be more varied: a single day might involve travelling between work, childcare, school, healthcare, shops and other caring responsibilities, often across several locations.
Inadequate transport planning is holding too many women back, both from accessing good jobs and from meeting the responsibilities outside work that still fall disproportionately on them. And it holds our economy back too.
The cost of poor connectivity
The pressures of caring for children or for elderly or sick relatives already undermine women’s ability to progress in their careers. Women’s Budget Group research shows that many women, particularly young women, hold several part-time, low-paid jobs out of necessity, to top up their income rather than by choice. That makes them more reliant on a well-integrated transport network.
Recent research from the University of Essex found that women in the UK face higher commuting costs, access smaller labour markets and have more limited job opportunities as a result. It also shows that women tend to favour a shorter commute even where that means giving up a better-paid job further away.
Think about what that means in practice. How can you put in extra hours and secure a promotion if you’re constantly starting later and leaving earlier, worried that public transport or congestion will make you late to pick up your child? And how can you make up the time in the evening when you have caring responsibilities at home too? These pressures affect men as well, of course, and improving our workplaces and transport network will make things better for everyone.
The prize is significant. If women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men, it could add £250 billion to UK gross value added, yet as of 2025 only 19% of active UK companies were female-led. More women in good jobs means higher incomes for families, more spending power in local economies, a wider talent pool for employers and more innovative, profitable organisations.
Building a transport system that works for women
Integrated public transport, with rapid transit where it’s needed, is as important to women’s progress as better childcare, stronger workers’ rights and measures that ease the structural disadvantage of unpaid care. It should connect women to the high-productivity jobs of the future in tech and AI, consultancy and banking, rather than leaving them to “make do”.
At this moment of national reflection, we should be bold enough to dismantle the status quo. That means:
- Integrated ticketing. Local transport authorities should be urged to integrate ticketing, so women can “trip-chain” between work, home and caring responsibilities on a single fare, without extra costs or uncertainty about whether their ticket covers the whole journey.
- A statutory duty on local transport authorities to bring forward strategies that strengthen women’s role in the regional economy. This would help women in areas with fewer job opportunities, connect communities to a wider range of jobs and services, and require routes to reflect women’s travel habits.
- A commonsense approach to the built environment. Spatial planning and transport connectivity must go hand in hand. Housebuilding, regeneration and travel routes should complement women’s lives and livelihoods while opening up a wider range of jobs, so women aren’t forced to trade pay for proximity to childcare and essential services.
- Onsite childcare. For too many women, aligning childcare with high-income employment centres is still daunting. Employers, especially those with large profit margins, should be engaged on what they can provide onsite or nearby. The difference this could make would be immeasurable.
A lever we are yet to pull
For decades we’ve watched women from all backgrounds secure a firmer footing in every sector, workplace and industry, rights that were hard fought for. But in every corner of the country we’ve been negligent in bringing the workplace closer to women and in designing transport that caters to their needs along the way.
Without public transport that aligns with how women live and work today, economic advancement will be slow. Women in communities like mine have an immeasurable amount to contribute. What they need now is a transport system that gets them where they need to be: to work, to care, and to take part fully in their communities and the economy.